Yahoo Opens Up BrowserPlus Web Software

After being in stealth mode for a year now, Yahoo suddenly offered the public a chance to take a “sneak peak” at its new software, Yahoo!BrowserPlus. From what we can gather, BrowserPlus is being touted as a tool for “extending the web” via a simple-to-execute web applications development processes.

If released for public use and abuse, BrowserPlus would give users the ability to update and add new services on the fly without the need to restart or reload a browser page. BrowserPlus benefits both users and web application developers. Since it doesn’t require web browse reloading, users can easily add new web services without the need to run installers. While developers can check for and activate new services with a single function call, which is of course subject to user approval. BrowserPlus will handle software distribution and updates for users.

For the BrowserPlus sampler, Yahoo has made available some demo applications to demonstrate how BrowserPlus works. This sampler includes a web in-page Flickr photo uploader, browser based IRC (chat) Client, and developer tool for exploring Web Services output.

If you will check out BrowserPlus, you’ll notice its similarities with other online image management tool, where it allows you to upload photos directly from your PC.

Like we said, BrowserPlus is currently in “sneak peek” beta mode, so wouldn’t find something interesting enough about it. But we’re guessing that in time, once BrowserPlus gets officially announced, then we would find out whether it offers something better into the crowd.

Arnold Zafra writes daily on the announcements by Google, Ask.com, Yahoo & MSN along with how these announcements effect web publishers. He is currently building three niche blogs covering iPad News, Google Android Phones and E-Book Readers.